Plaza de los Bandos

by Ángel Pérez Martín

During the 15th Century in a southern European town named Salamanca, an unexpected and horrifying incident occurred involving two major aristocratic families.
Many of the inhabitants were divided into two separate camps, the “bando de San Benito” on the one side and on the other the “bando de Santo Tomé”. It opposed noble families quarrelling over the supremacy in the city.
After a peek of tension between the two sides, a barbaric act took place in the centre of the city; the males of the Monroy family, members of the first cited band, were assassinated by the men of the other camp.
In reaction to this awful crime, the patriarch’s wife wanted to avenge the lost of her loved ones and planned an equally cruel response to the latter. In order to do that, she dressed up as a man to hurt physically and therefore psychologically her enemies. Her aim was to save her family’s honor and thus killed each murderer of her lost ones.
The Monroy family resided in the nowadays known as the “Plaza de los Bandos” which owes its name to the confrontation.